Iga Janik /Köln

American Girl in Gropiusstadt

From a series of performative gestures, in which I juxtapose everyday scenarios with out of place characters, this performance took place in the Gropiusstadt shopping mall on an ordinary Sunday afternoon. Over dressed for the occasion I went to the mall to mill about, and in the great
American tradition to see and be seen. Drawing attention to myself as an outsider through my behaviour and costume, I interacted with the crowd of Berliners in their routine mall environment while a photographer documented the event.

Much of my creative research is about public personas. Faced with the public we all become conscious of how we project ourselves to others. Judged by our clothing and behaviour we either belong or not among those that surround us.

The title of the piece, American Girl in Gropiusstadt, refers to a small tradition in Hollywood’s fashion photography, which engages the notion of the foreigner as a dramatic tool, and which I mimic here to speak of the character as a cultural stereotype created by the image industry itself.